Trudy Gold
The Mitfords: An Extraordinary and Divided Family

Trudy Gold - The Mitfords: An Extraordinary and Divided Family

- I’m going to be spending two sessions at least looking at the Mitfords, because they are such an extraordinary family. Of course as you know, they’re incredibly famous, very eccentric, they’re aristocratic. In fact, they could trace their roots all the way back to the Norman Conquest. There were seven children, six daughters and one son, and this is how they were described in the “Times”. “Diana the fascist, Jessica the communist, Unity the Hitler lover, Nancy the novelist, Deborah the duchess, and Pamela, the unobtrusive poultry connoisseur.” And as I said, they lived against the backdrop of the most extraordinary times. Nancy, who was the eldest, she was the author of “The Pursuit of Love” and “Love in a Cold Climate”. I’m sure you will have seen television versions of that. And she was madly in love with a French Jewish officer who was a colleague of De Gaulle. Pamela, who was known as the rural Mitford. Tom, who was the only son, he had an affair with an Austrian Jewish dancer called Tilly Losch, but was a fascist sympathiser, and when war broke out, when the Second World War broke out, he wouldn’t fight the Nazis because they were Huns and he liked the Huns. I’m using language of their, I’m using their language here. And he in fact died in Burma in the Far East. Another of the family, and I’m going to do a lot of these women in detail, the absolutely exquisitely beautiful Diana. She was first married to Lord Moyne’s son, Bryan Guinness.

Now those of you who listened to my session on Palestine will know that Lord Moyne had been in charge of the Middle East and actually had, and was later on assassinated by the Lehi. His son Bryan Guinness married Diana, and it was the society wedding of the year. Of course the king and queen were there, and the whole of the English establishment. She later divorced Bryan Guinness. His fortune is founded in of course, the brewery family, and she married Oswald Mosley, who created the British Union of Fascists, and they finished up in jail, and later on went to Paris. They lived in exile in Paris, where they spent quite a lot of time with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Then we come to Unity, Unity Mitford, in many ways the most peculiar, tragic, and horrific of them all. She had a total crush on Adolf Hitler. She spent most of her time in Munich. She was incredibly close to him, and she shoots herself when war is declared. She survived and he paid all her expenses. He sent her roses. He arranged for her to go by train to Bern in Switzerland, and arranged for her family to pick her up. And Jessica who was a communist, Jessica ran away with her first cousin Esmond Romilly, who by the way, was Churchill’s wife’s nephew. And she later, when he was killed in the Second World War, she married an American Jewish civil rights lawyer, communist. And Deborah, who was the baby, she married Harold Macmillan’s nephew by marriage. So two of the sisters married into the families of people who became Prime Ministers of England. And on the death of her father-in-law, she became the Duchess of Devonshire.

One of the most important stately homes in England, Chatsworth, is owned by the Devonshires, and she and her husband, she died in 2014, and she and her husband were strong supporters of Israel. So that’s why I have said they are an extraordinary and a divided family. And you can just imagine. They had a very eccentric background, which I’m going to spend a bit of time on. You can just imagine the fights that these women had. So let’s start by having a look at the father, David Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale. Now, he was a total eccentric. He was the younger son of Baron Redesdale, he was totally non-academic. He once said, “I only read one book, Jack London’s ‘White Fang’, and ‘cause I read it and 'cause I liked it, I’m never going to read another book.” He wasn’t bright enough to go to Eton. He failed his exams for Sandhurst, the military college, so he finished up in Ceylon as a tea planter. Second World War, which of course, our South African people on lockdown, we are going to be looking at South Africa in September, by the way. He’s fighting for the British in the war. He becomes a prisoner but he escapes. He had a certain kind of bravery. He comes back to England and he marries Sydney Bowles, who is of course going to be the mother, and for a time he took on her father’s business. Her father was an MP and also an aristocrat, another eccentric, but he owned “Vanity Fair” magazine, and later “The Lady”. And David Mitford, he actually spent time running the papers. He also owned a gold mine in Canada at a place, believe it or not, called Swastika. And that is where Unity, their fourth child, was conceived. And later on, she’s going to share that knowledge with Hitler, and one of the reasons they thought they had this incredible bond.

What happens is his older brother dies in World War I, and after death he becomes Lord Redesdale. And he goes to, as Lord Redesdale he is a member of the House of Lords. He hardly ever spoke in the House of Lords. He was impecunious. Like many aristos, he had absolutely no idea about how to manage money. Of course he had landed estates, but he had seven children, lots of servants. And in the end he has to move his family to a smaller stately home, which I’m going to show you. I’m now going to use language that many of you, today would certainly be seen inappropriate, but I want you to get a notion of who the man was. His daughter, Nancy, who of course becomes a famous novelist, much of her writing is actually autobiographical. And in her novels, he is Uncle Matthew, and he used to go around saying “Abroad is bloody.” And this is a quote from Nancy about, Uncle Matthew is actually her father, and this is what he is meant to have said. So this is not my language, this is his language. “Frogs are slightly better than Huns or Wops, but abroad is unutterably bloody, and foreigners are fiends.” At first he was scornful of fascism, but in 1938, because his daughter Unity is going to be so engrossed with Hitler, he and his wife travel to Munich and Berlin, and Hitler goes out of his way to charm them, and he found Hitler absolutely likeable. He also liked Hitler’s admiration for the British Empire. He came out in favour of the Anschluss, when of course Hitler went home to Austria. And later on though, we’re going to see he changes his mind.

So let’s have a look at the woman he married, Sydney Bowles, 1880 to 1963. She had a very sad childhood. Her daughter Nancy actually called it pathos personified. Her mother died when she was only eight, actually from a botched abortion, and left her in the care of her totally eccentric father, who was known as Tap, Thomas Gibson Bowles. He had four children, two daughters, two sons, and after the death of his wife, he used to take them on very long sea voyages. You’ve got to remember, these people have a lot of money, and the world is theirs, they are the English aristocracy. He had very strange nursery rules. The kids had to keep a Mosaic diet. Those of you who keep to the dietary laws in the Torah, that is what these children were brought up on. Not because he was a Jew lover, on the contrary, and so was she, they were both actually very anti-Semitic. But the children were brought up not to have pork, not to have shellfish, et cetera, et cetera. They also didn’t have to eat anything they didn’t like, and the windows were kept open six inches all year. I have a couple of very English friends, and believe it or not, when I visit one of them in particular, in the winter I carry a water bottle around with me strapped to my tummy, because this does seem to be a kind of, yes I am stereotyping,, but it really is a craziness of so many English that it’s very weak to have your central heating on.

And the children never had any Christmas or birthday presents, he didn’t believe in presents. He said, “I housed them, I fed them, I watered them, and I clothesed them, and I educated, that was enough.” However, in his very strange way he was attentive. As a girl growing up, it must’ve been quite difficult, because he always dressed her in sailor’s uniforms, her and her sister. The boys went off to school. The girls had to be educated by nannies, and occasionally governesses. And because in those days, girls were just meant to make good marriages. There was a hope at one stage that she would go to Girton. It seemed she wanted it, but of course that was denied. That of course is a female college. And we know that she wore sailor suits every day up until 18 when one of her father’s lady friends said, “Look, this isn’t the way to bring up a daughter. If she’s coming out, she’s got to have beautiful dresses.” And it was through him that she met her future husband, because he was very close to Lord Redesdale. And I’m going to talk more about them when I talk about Unity. And she met David actually when she was 14 years old. And she became quite a successful debutante. Of course, debutantes were, they would go to Court and they would do the season, but she married him when she was 24 years old. Anyway, can we go on to see a slide of “Vanity Fair”, which, no that’s the British Brothers League. I beg your pardon, I’ll talk about that later. “Vanity Fair”, of course becomes a very important publication. And of course it’s still with us today, as is “The Lady”.

He wasn’t very good at it. Of course the staff run it, but the husband goes in to look after the father’s magazines. Okay, can we go on please? This is Asthall Manor, this is the home that he was forced to come to after he had to sell his grand pile. So this is where the girls were brought up. Can we go on please? And here you see five of the Mitford sisters. You see Jessica, Nancy, Diana, Unity, and Pam. Deborah who is the youngest is not there. Now let’s have a look at each one of them individually. They’re very, very beautiful. That’s Nancy, the novelist. Pamela, remember she was the poultry farmer. That’s the brother Tom. They even had their own language at home. They had their fights, they had their closeness, but they were an extraordinarily close group. And ironically, every one of them could write. We’re going to find out that even Diana becomes a writer. So there you see the brother Tom. They’re a very, very good-looking family, aren’t they? Can we go on to see the next group? There you see the exquisite Diana, who I’m going to talk about next Tuesday when I talk about her and Oswald Mosley. And of course when she married Bryan Guinness, it was the marriage of the decade. You know, one of the wealthiest men in England marrying the most beautiful woman. And also you’ve got to think of the times. By this time we’re in the late '20s, early '30s. These are the bright young things, the gay young things. This is party time after the First World War, when we’re going to party till we drop. And of course Unity, also very, very good-looking, who falls very, very unbalanced. Today we would say that she needed a lot of psychiatric help, I think. But of course she is the one who develops this passion for Hitler. How much was it reciprocated is a very interesting story. Jessica Mitford, of course, is the one who becomes a communist, runs away with her first cousin who fought in Spain, poor in London, then goes to New York. She earned her money as a journalist, later as a writer, and we’re going to find out how she was involved in all sorts of civil rights movements. And let’s have a look at the baby of the family, Deborah.

• [Corina] Trudy you’re sitting back from the camera, so you’re barely in the, there we go.

• All right, is that better? Is that-

• Yep, and somebody is hearing a lot of noise. I think it’s the table again.

• All right, I’ll sit on my hands, sorry. And there you see Deborah, also very beautiful. They are an incredibly good-looking family, are they not? Anyway, what I’m going to talk about now, let’s start with Nancy Mitford, so can we go on? And here you see her presented to the Court of King George V. This is the debutante ball where George V and Queen Mary would receive the young women of the season, and their job was of course to find husbands. But the problem was with so many of these young girls, this is now, think when they’re born. We are now into the '20s, the late '20s, and the world has moved on. I want you to think of the horror of the First World War, what it did to people. What did the First World War actually do to people? It cheapened life. It was such a senseless, useless, ridiculous war, and it had begun for honor’s sake. And yet, what was it? In the end, modern technology was harnessed to mass murder, and that was the First World War. And what did it do to those who survived? To start with, so many young men were killed. That’s why her father became Baron Redesdale, because his oldest brother was killed in the First World War. And it happened to so many, something like 30% of the officer class died as a result of the war. And what happened there was, what happened to the young? Particularly the young and the rich. We know what happened to the young and the poor. The situation in Europe and England, it was dreadful. Hunger marches, hunger strikes, terrible conditions. But for the wealthy who would hang out in London at the Ritz, at the Savoy, what was life like for them? Too much drink, too much partying, and also partying till you drop.

And, but she had more to her than that. That comes out as well. It comes out with Nancy because as I said, most of these girls were incredibly clever. They’d created their own language. And she doesn’t know what to do, but she has not just dizzy young friends, she also has other friends, can we go on please? And this is Evelyn Waugh, one of England’s most important writers, who also went around with that crowd. It’s quite funny because he was actually born in a semi-detached in Golders Green. But he so much desperately wanted to be part of the upper classes, and you can see the way he’s dressed. He was very bright, he went to Oxford, and he of course wrote “Brideshead Revisited”. And if you haven’t seen, or if you haven’t read these books, and if you haven’t seen the television productions of them, you’re in for a huge treat. So he’s he who suggests to her, she’s clever, “Why on earth don’t you write?” And that’s what exactly, what she begins to do. But bright young things need to marry, and having had a series of disastrous love affairs, she then marries somebody called Peter Rodd. Let’s see Peter Rodd. This is their wedding, Peter Rodd, 1904 to 1968. Again an aristocrat, far too much money, but a real dilettante. He’d been to Wellington and to Oxford, but he never really did much with his life. He actually, in 1933, he joined the British Union of Fascists. Later on he denounced the movement. But by 1938, we find him doing humanitarian work in Perpignan where a lot of people who had escaped Franco and the Spanish Civil War were in refugee camps. When war broke out he achieved the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, and then after the war, he tries his hands at lots of things. He tries to be a filmmaker. He tried to make a film on the Civil War, it failed. He and Nancy get divorced. He was bisexual, but that’s not why she divorced him, actually. Because by that time, she’d become a very successful writer and had fallen madly in love. And after that, he lived a totally idle life. He spent his time in Rome being a decadent, and finally in Malta where he dies. He is also in Nancy’s books. He was called Prodd by the Mitfords. Now let’s turn to the love of her life. So what happens is, Nancy being advised by Evelyn Waugh, she’s got talent and she starts as a journalist. And then she writes her first book, “Wigs on the Green”, and it’s actually a satire on her sisters. It’s a satire on Unity, who by this time is in Munich with Hitler, and on Diana and Oswald Mosley. It becomes a great success, she’s a brilliant writer. And as a result of that, this is the beginning of the huge rifts in the Mitford family. Nancy and Diana, it never really healed as a response to “Wigs on the Green”.

And can we go on please? And this is Gaston Palewski. He’s actually born into a Jewish family in Paris. His father was an industrialist, a wealthy Jewish industrialist who’d originally come from the Pale of settlement. His mother was a woman called Rosa nee, she was born Diamamt-Berger, she came from Romania. He had a very privileged background. He was educated at the Sorbonne and at Oxford. He was a great Anglophone. He went into politics, he becomes a friend and supporter of Charles De Gaulle, and when war breaks out, when Hitler invades France, of course the French surrender, but De Gaulle comes to London where he’s joined by Palewski, who becomes his director of political affairs. He and De Gaulle are very, very close. And I’m also telling you this 'cause you need to understand just how at the centre of events the Mitford family were. He was in command of the free French army, one of the free French armies in the end of the war, and he’s really De Gaulle’s right hand man. And he later on goes to have a very important political career. He was also a very good amateur artist. He was a member of the Academy de Beaux Arts. He was an incredible womaniser. He met Nancy Mitford in London in the war, and because of him she moves permanently to Paris in 1946. He was never faithful to her and she knew that. And in fact he married one of his other mistresses who he’d had a long affair with prior to her divorce. He married a woman called Helen-Violette de Tallyrand, who was the daughter of the seventh Duke of Tallyrand, and his American wife, Anna Gould.

Why am I giving you this information? Because Anna Gould was the daughter, those of you, the Americans here, she was the daughter of Jay Gould, the important American industrialist, and like so many Americans, heiresses, she came to Europe to find a husband, and she married her duke. And so he marries her, I mean he marries the daughter. And however, he must have had the charm of the devil because Nancy became very ill, and he was with her on her deathbed. He didn’t, he had lots of affairs, and the fact that he hadn’t even told her that he was going to marry the woman he later married, his other mistress, must have come as an appalling shock. Ironically he appears in two of her novels, “In Pursuit of Love” and “Love in a Cold Climate”, very clear-eyed, she was very clear-eyed about him, and she dedicated “The Pursuit of Love” to him. And he, even though he knew that it wasn’t a totally favourable portrait, he insisted that she use his real name in the dedication. So she was madly in love with this character. Now, can we go on please? And there you see “The Pursuit of Love”, which is again the story of the Mitfords, and the gay young things, the bright young things of the '20s and '30s, and it becomes an incredibly successful novel. And this is important, she becomes incredibly successful. She becomes a columnist for the “Sunday Times”. She writes also, can we go on please? “Loving a Cold Climate”, which is the run up there. That’s a lovely scene of postwar Paris. I wanted just to give you the atmosphere, why so many people fell in love with Paris, including Nancy. But she’s writing for the British papers. She comes back to England quite often to see her family, and but she later contracts cancer and she dies in Paris. Can we go on please? There you see “Love in a Cold Climate”. The next one please. There you see “Noblesse Oblige”. Now this is a very, very naughty book. I’m sure many of you know the expression, U and non-U. What is acceptable to say, what is not acceptable. Should you say napkin? Should you say serviette? Should you say loo, should you say toilet?

She is in a way mocking the manners of the English. She was a terrible snob as well. But it’s worth a read because it gives you a notion of how mannered the English class system actually was. On one level, she’s mocking it. But on another level, as I said, she was a total snob. But it very much lays down the characteristics of the English aristocracy. Now let me now turn to one of her younger sisters, Unity, who is much more complicated and much darker. Because what I’m going to try and do in these two, maybe three presentations, is give you the various shades. Now remember, they all are brought up together. They all, they quarrel, just think about it. Jessica becomes a committed communist when she’s very young. Unity becomes a committed fascist when she’s very young. The parents were very, very right wing. You can just imagine all the quarrels. Nancy, who is very acid-tongued, Deborah the baby, who just wants peace and quiet, Pamela, who just wants country life, that what the atmosphere must have been like at home. And also all the cousins who came to visit. We know for example, they were very close to the Churchill family because Lady Redesdale was a cousin of Clementine Hozier who had married Winston Churchill, and Randolph, Winston’s son, was incredibly close to the Mitford sisters. So you’ve got to get them as part of that particular world. And also how they spent their weekends. London was for the season, but then you go to stately home, to stately home, hunting, shooting, fishing, sharing beds, et cetera, et cetera. And also the parents, very eccentric parents. So let’s talk now about Unity, who in many ways is the toughest of them. Now I’ve already mentioned, let’s have a look at Swastika, Ontario.

That is where she was born because her father had bought a gold mine in Canada. It never made any money, but she was actually conceived in Swastika. Now I want to talk a bit about her grandparents, because I think it’s important that you understand where these fascist ideas come from. So can we see Lord Redesdale? Now this is Algernon Mitford, 1st Baron Redesdale, the father of David, the grandfather of the Mitford family, the Mitford girls and Tom. He was a career diplomat. He was in St. Petersburg, he was also in Peking. He was in Japan, he was very close to the czars. You can just imagine, that’s the world he mixed in. And in 1912, he was invited by Siegfried Wagner, Richard’s son, to Bayreuth, why? Because Lord Redesdale was very close to a man called Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Can we see the next slide? Now, Houston Stewart Chamberlain was an Englishman. He was the son of an Admiral. He hated the England he was born into, he found it far too industrial. He loathed Disraeli, he was a violent anti-Semite. He goes off to Germany, his family are wealthy. He goes off to Germany with his tutor and he falls madly in love with Germany and German culture. And he spends time in Vienna, he spends time in Berlin, and he mixes in Wagner’s circle. He falls passionately in love with Wagner’s music, and later on he marries one of Wagner’s daughters by Cosima. Cosima of course Wagner’s wife, who was even more antisemitic than Wagner. And Houston Stewart Chamberlain was a very, very close friend of Lord Redesdale. And Lord Redesdale, his friend Houston Stewart Chamberlain, he goes to Bayreuth, and this is, he could also, by the way, Lord Redesdale also wrote. He kept very interesting memoirs. And he said, “A drama more like a religious ceremony. Wagner holds their minds in the thralldom of his genius.”

And in 1911, Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s most important book, “The Foundations of the 19th Century” were published, and they were published in England, and Lord Redesdale wrote the forward. Now, “The Foundations of the 19th Century” is full of race theory. In it, Houston Stuart Chamberlain divides the world into races. The most superior race are the Aryans. And please, and I’ve mentioned this to you before, whenever I talk about race theory, please suspend all your critical faculties, because I’m not talking anything that will make any sense to anyone who’s got a rational mind. So the world is divided up into various groups. Who are the Aryans? Well Jesus is an Aryan, by the way, but the Aryans are the Nordic peoples, the Germans, the Scandinavians, and the English, and they are the masters of the world. Then you come to the French and the Italians, the Roman peoples, then you come to the Slavs. The group he calls the Negroes are at the bottom of the racial pile, according to them. The only group capable of destroying the Aryan, because it understands purity of blood, are the Jews. Chamberlain didn’t hate Jews because he thought they were inferior. He hated them because he thought they were the only group capable of destroying the Aryan. It’s very important you take this point on, because the Nazis are going to be infected by all these ideas. So was the Kaiser. When Houston Stewart Chamberlain sent a copy of his book to the Kaiser Wilhelm II, he wrote to him, “God has sent you to me and to Germany.” And later on of course, he totally endorsed national socialism, and Hitler went to his funeral. By that time, by the time Hitler had created his movement, Chamberlain was in a wheelchair.

But nevertheless, there’s pictures of him at Nazi rallies, and of course Winifred Wagner, who took over the running of the festival, was a mad Nazi sympathiser, and Lord Redesdale is part of that cohort. And he did say in his introduction that he felt that Houston Stewart Chamberlain had gone too far with the Jews, but he did say this. “I have already hinted that some of his conclusions I do not agree with, but I go all length in his appreciation of the stubborn purpose and dogged consistency, which has made the Jew what he is.” Let me repeat this. This is Redesdale’s own writing in the forward to the book. “I have already hinted that with some of his conclusions I do not agree, but I go all lengths in his appreciation of the stubborn purpose and dogged consistency, which has made the Jew what he is.” And this is a quote from the book. This is actually a quote from Chamberlain. “The entrance of the Jews has exercised a large and in many ways fatal influence on the course of European history since the first century.” Now, now is not the time to unpack the history of antisemitism, because we’ve already done this many times, and the website really is coming. And of course there are so many books on it. But the point is, never forget that at this particular stage, even though the majority of Jews are dirt poor in Eastern Europe, you have a group of international financiers with a high visibility profile. Only a small group, but these are the people that were noticed, particularly in a world that was changing far too fast for the majority, and in a world where so many people hated change. Important to remember that. Anyway, that was one of Unity’s grandfathers. Let’s talk about the other one. Let’s have a look at Thomas Gibson Bowles, Sydney’s father.

As I’ve already mentioned him, the grandfather, I beg your pardon. He was the MP for King’s Lynn, and he was a naval man. And on his travels he said this of the Jews. “Read about the about the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Certainly if any Jews came from the neighbourhood of Hatton Garden, in truth I don’t see what the Jews have to wail about. If they had been expelled from Jerusalem, then they are masters of London, Paris and Berlin. If they are no longer governors of Palestine, they are the tyrants of Europe, and I cannot believe that they hold themselves to be worse off for the change. Nor shall I believe it until I see the great house of Rothschild abandon London in order to set up bank in Jerusalem, Baron de Hirsch leave Paris in order to make a railway from Jerusalem to Jericho, and all the Jewish controllers of the European press cease printing startling intelligence in the West, and take to achieving the largest circulation in the world in Hebrew near the Damascus Gate.” Let me repeat this to you. This is the grandfather. You’ve had one grandfather, you now have the other. So you can imagine the kind of table talk when they are visiting. “If they are no longer governors of Palestine, they are the tyrants of Europe, and I cannot believe that they hold themselves to be worse off for the change. Nor shall I believe it until shall I see the great house of Rothschild abandon London in order to set up bankers in Jerusalem, Baron de Hirsch,” remember, he’s the railway king, “leave Paris in order to name a railway from Jerusalem to Jericho, and all the Jewish controllers of the European press to cease printing startling intelligence in the West and take to achieving the largest circulation in the world in Hebrew near the Damascus Gate.” Fascinating, isn’t it?

And of course, it’s no wonder that Herzl, who was such an acculturated Jew, was aware of all this kind of thing. It’s no wonder that he realised that it was a disease that will never go away. Now, so those are Unity’s grandparents. Now let’s have a look at Unity, age nine, very, very pretty. One of the tragedies of the Mitfords is that she and Jessica as children were very close, but they quarrelled all the time, and they very much took up political positions quite, quite early on. Now, what happened to Unity? As I said, it’s quite likely today that we would say that she had certain mental problems. She certainly was very bad at reading people. And we do know that the family travelled a lot around Europe. The brother Tom, you know, a lot of young aristocrats, think of the British royal family. They were so married into the German aristocracy that there were lots of toings and goings between England and Germany, and Tom went on a tour to Munich. And because they are aristocracy, they are courted by those in power. And what happens is Diana, and I’ll be talking about her more in detail next week, Diana having achieved a divorce from Guinness, is now utterly, she’s in love with Oswald Mosley, but he is still married. So she goes on a tour and she takes Unity with her, and they go to Germany, and they go to Munich. And in Munich Unity becomes absolutely fixated with national socialism. The father had given them each an allowance. She had 125 pounds a year to keep herself. And as a result, she falls in love with Germany, she decides she’s going to learn German. So Mother comes over to make sure she’s at a suitable pension run by a Baroness. She learns German, and she becomes fixated by the idea of Hitler, and she works out exactly where he goes to dine. And this striking English woman would go to the cafe every day.

Diana comes back to London, she’s going backwards and forwards to London, and from London to Munich, Diana for a period. But Unity sits in the cafe until finally she is called over by Hitler. But let’s have a look at a another picture. She also becomes very close to Julius Streicher. Now Julius Streicher, can we have a look at his picture, please? He is one of the most unpleasant of the evil ones. One of the, actually he was beyond the pale, even for most of the Nazis. He was born in Bavaria. Believe it or not, he was an elementary school teacher. You know, there’s a wonderful quote of of Einstein’s. He was talking about the First World War. He said, “The German school system has so much to answer for, what it has pumped into people’s minds for the last 50 years.” He was totally disenchanted and disillusioned by Germany’s terrible defeat at the end of the First World War, and he joins the nascent Nazi party, which of course was created in Munich. Munich remember, is the most Nazi of all the German cities. There have been three revolutions, all communist, all run by Jews. Then the Freikorps had taken over, and then Hitler created the party, and gradually developed and developed, and of course by 1933 took power. Now in 1921, Streicher was one of the earliest members of the Nazi party, and by 1923, with money from fascist sympathisers like the Wagner family, like the Singer sewing machine heiress, he creates “Der Sturmer”, which is one of the most anti-Semitic papers ever written, and I’m sure many of you have seen cartoons from it. To give you a through quote, this is a quote from the 1st of April, 1933 which, the boycott of Jewish shops. “Never since the beginning of the world and the creation of man has there been a nation which dared to fight against the nation of blood suckers and extortionists, who for a thousand years have spread all over the world. It was left to our movement to expose the Jew as a mass murderer. As long as I stand at the head of the struggle, this struggle will be conducted so honestly, that the eternal Jew will derive no joy from it.” He was very much known as Jew baiter number one.

In 1940, this is what the paper said. “At the end of the war, the extermination of the Jewish people will have been brought about.” This is November, 1940. “The Jewish rabble will be exterminated like weeds and vermin, so it can never again disturb the bloody fought-for peace of the European peoples.” He was a totally unpleasant character. He was a sadist, he was a womaniser, he was a rapist, and he even alienated many of his own party members. He was totally irresponsible. And don’t forget that Hitler had to get the army along with him, but because he was one of the comrades, Hitler protected him right to the end. His end by the way, he was captured and put on trial at Nuremberg, and he was executed. And believe it or not, his last words on the scaffold were “Purimfest”. He was a completely monstrous character. Can we go back and see him with Unity? Because Unity gets in touch with him. She’s already had the joy of meeting Hitler, and after three weeks of hanging around, he comes in with his coterie, and finally he sends for her. And she comes to the table and she writes home, “This is the greatest day of my life.” Now in June, 1935, she writes a letter to Julius Streicher. It says, I’m reading it to you, “'Der Sturmer’,” and she writes it in German. “As a British woman fascist, I should like to express my admiration of you. I have lived in Munich for a year and read ‘Der Sturmer’ every week. If only we had such a newspaper in England. The English have no notion of the Jewish danger. English Jews are described as decent. Perhaps the Jews in England are more clever with their propaganda than in other countries. I cannot tell, but it is a certain fact that our struggle is extremely hard. Our worst Jews work behind the scenes.

They never come into the open, and therefore we cannot show them to the British public in their true dreadfulness. But we hope however, that we’ll see that we’ll soon win against the world enemy in spite of all his cunning. We think with joy of the day we should be able to say with might and authority, ‘England for the English, out with the Jews.’ With German greetings, hail Hitler, Unity Mitford.” And she wrote at the bottom, “I want everyone to know that I am a Jew hater.” So Streicher obviously is totally intrigued by this. I mean, who is this British aristocrat who’s written to him? And in the article, he writes that it’s written by the daughter of a Graf. You know that impresses him, and he sends for her, and he interviews her in “Der Sturmer”, and he prefaces it not by saying that her father was a Graf, but she is related to Winston Churchill, and she’s invited the Midsummer Festival, and she gives a speech. Now you see her giving a speech. “The Girl who Adores Hitler” was the title in an English newspaper. “Peer’s Daughter is a Jews Hater”. The parents were furious, because the “Evening Standard” reports it, and then the national press. At home Decker, Jessica, refers to Streicher as a filthy butcher, and Diana who’s also met him says, “No, he is a kitten.” Now wow, what do you do with that? Anyway, let’s have a look at her with Hitler. Next one, go back. Now that is the photograph at a tea party at Haus Wahnfried. Not only does Hitler begin to take tea with her, she is invited to Bayreuth, and she becomes a regular companion. He’s absolutely fascinated by this English aristocrat. Remember, he’s got a soft spot for England and for the English aristocracy.

Diana, who by this time is openly with Oswald Mosley, also comes to Germany, and there are many pictures of the two beautiful girls with the Fuhrer, and with all the other Nazi party officials. A real friendship develops, and Unity writes in her diary, these are the greatest days of her life. Was it a sexual relationship? Hitler was very, very strange sexually, we will never know. He did have a mistress, Geli Raubal. There’s lots of really weird books on that, which I don’t advise you to read. But the point is, whether he was her lover or not, the point is they were incredibly close, and she had a mission. Her mission was to try and create peace between England and Germany, and ironically, her sister Diana was invited by Churchill to Chartwell in the late ‘30s to talk about Hitler, because Diana was actually very bright and she was, she might have been a monster, but she was a bright monster. And she was one of the few people who knew Hitler very well, because they’re going to be part of the social circle. They are invited to the Munich Olympics. They become very close to the Goebbels. And in fact later on Oswald Mosley marries Diana Guinness Mitford in the home of the Goebbels. So you’ve got a situation where the families become, Unity and Diana, and Lord and Lady Redesdale, they are obviously furious and they come over to Munich, but they are bowled over by Hitler. Hitler goes out of his way to charm the mother. Even Lord Redesdale is charmed by him. When war breaks out though he gets, he’s very furious. But the point is, he was at the beginning charmed by Hitler, and Hitler goes out of his way to look after Unity. So the Goebbels take them in their car, and they’re part of the whole fanfare of the Munich Olympics. They are in the box with them. They are constant guests at Bayreuth, and really they are totally part of the Munich scene. And you can imagine what the British press do about this. And then of course, when Chamberlain comes to Munich, there is a hope that there will be reconciliation.

Lord Redesdale speaks in the House of Lords, hoping that appeasement will work, but then of course, war. Meanwhile, Hitler helps Unity find a beautiful flat. One of the Gauleiters in Munich, a man called Wagner, is more or less assigned to look after Unity, and of course they take the flat away from a Jewish family, and Unity writes about it. She takes some of the furniture. She says the Jewish family gave it to her. Horrible, horrible story. But then of course, war is declared, and when war is declared, she goes to see Wagner. She hands him an envelope. He doesn’t open it because he’s doing something else. She then takes herself to the English garden in Munich with her little pistol, which was one of her prize possessions. She always travelled around with a portrait of Hitler that he’d given her, her swastika badge that he had given her, and this little pearl-encrusted pistol. She shoots herself, but she doesn’t die. She is found, she is transferred to hospital. Hitler is visibly shaken, he sends roses. You’ve got to remember, I misspoke by the way. His first mistress was his niece, Geli Raubal. His current mistress was Eva Braun. Geli Raubal had either killed herself or been shot on the orders of Hitler, we will never know. Eva Braun had tried suicide a couple of times to attract his attention, and now Unity has shot herself. Hitler was visibly shaken.

He sends her flowers, he pays all her medical expenses. And believe it or not, he ships her off to Bern and pays all the expenses. She goes in a special sealed train, and then Churchill gives permission, remember there is a war on, Churchill actually gives permission for her parents to go and bring her back to England. You can imagine the furori in the British press. Can we see the next slide please? This is Unity returning to England. In fact, the bullet did lodge in her brain, and when the doctors in, it was actually in Oxford, she went to the infirmary and they said she’d had the best medical care. They couldn’t do anything about it. And as a result of the injury, she really had the mind of a child, and she became incontinent, she became very clumsy, and it led to a huge rift between the parents, because when war is declared, the father backs Britain, but Sydney never stops being a Nazi sympathiser, and that leads to the family split. And Unity is looked after by the mother. She is allowed in the end to go to the Scottish islands where they actually have, they have an island, and she dies there in 1948. So that’s the story of Unity, and I will be weaving more of it together later on, but I think now we will look at questions rather than go on to another sister.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: “Is Sydney Bowles related to the Queen Mother?”

A: Not as far as I know.

Q: “Does the phrase 'liking the Huns’ mean he would’ve liked or preferred that form of government for Britain?”

A: Look a lot of the aristocrats, Diana Mosley and Oswald Mosley were close friends with Edward VIII. There was a whole group of aristocrats, there was the Friday Club, the Duke of Wellington was a group. They would’ve, if Lord Halifax had become Prime Minister, a deal would’ve been struck. And what would’ve happened probably, Churchill would either have been murdered or would’ve managed to escape. But there would’ve been an appeasement government, probably the Duke of Windsor would’ve been put back on the throne. And look, the Germans wanted a deal with Britain. The British would’ve been allowed to keep their Empire as long as Germany could have Europe. It’s a very, very strange tale.

Yes, Louise is saying, “Jessica was married to Bob Treuhaft. Not clear Bob was a communist, both very hospitable to Berkeley people, students. Son went to Cuba and had a connection with pianos.” Yes, I’m going to be talking about that next week. They did in the end, I think she joined the American Communist Party, she did.

Q: Shelly, “Did Unity get pregnant by Hitler?”

A: There is no evidence for that. There are so many stories Shelly, but no evidence.

Should insert, “Close to Decker.” Yes, she was very close to Decker when they were young.

“Deborah owned the Swan Inn at Swinbrook. We had a lovely lunch there just a couple of weeks ago. Some Mitford memorabilia on display here.” Harry yeah, Deborah as I said, became very pro-Israel.

Rosaline Springer saying, “The Duke of Devonshire’s interest stems from conversations between his father and Churchill. He said that when he hosted a lunch for Ault at the House of Lords.” The problem is, I wonder how much it’d had to do with the fact though that because of the Mitford reputation, you’ve got to, because Deborah also went to Germany. She was introduced to Hitler, it’s a complicated tale. Lord Redesdale, let me explain. Lord Redesdale was the actual physical title, Mitford was the family name.

Q: “Was the mother related to Queen Camilla?”

A: Not as far as I know. Camilla’s great-grandmother was Alice Keppel, who was the mistress of Edward VII. I don’t think so, but I will try and find out for you.

Q: “With such political diversity of views amongst the sisters, did they talk politics with each other and try to sway the sibs? Could they see Britain under one form of government or the other?”

A: You’ve got to remember, you have two extremes here. You have Jessica who was a communist, and she runs off with her cousin Romilly who, very, very left wing, and Deborah, beg your pardon. Diana and Unity were fascists. In the end, they broke the family. Deborah tried to keep the peace, but the family was broken, and Jessica and Diana were never reconciled.

This is from Myrna. “Swastika is close to Kirkland Lake where there’s a gold mine, which I think is still operational, home to many Jewish families, including my in-laws.” I bet there are many lockdowners listening from northern Ontario.“ Oh God, that’s extraordinary.

Q: "Was Houston Chamberlain connected to the political Chamberlains?”

A: I’ve got to check that, I have a hunch he was.

Arlene, “Was Chamberlain related to,” now you’ve got to remember there was yes, Neville Chamberlain was a ghastly character. But there was another Chamberlain, Austin Chamberlain, who was very good to the Jews. It’s a always a complicated story.

And this is Naomi saying, “Swastika is close to Kirkland Lake.” Yes, she said that.

Q: “How does the Mitford relative poverty play into what they eventually espouse?”

A: Not at all, when we talk about poverty, it means going from a huge stately home to a lesser stately home.

Oh, Lorna’s telling us about a fun poem by John Benjamin on U and non-U language, “How to Get on in Society”.

“Interested in the view that Adolf Hitler was so very charismatic for these and other females.” Yes you see, when we see Hitler at his rallies and his rants, it seems almost impossible to understand it. But on the other hand, you should look at the crowds, and he did have some sort of hypnotic quality. Yes, evidently he could be very, very charming. He was taught to be charming by matrons in Munich who liked him, yeah. And evidently he bolded Sydney over as well as Unity and Diana.

Q: “Why does Unity shoot herself?”

A: Her dreams are over, Germany’s gone to war with England. She wanted it so much, she wanted there to be peace between Germany and England. So she has to kill herself, which it didn’t work.

“Did the Redesdale antisemitism continue after the war? What happened to the family after Tom, their brother died?”

Ooh, I better check who, there is, I better check who it is.

Yes, “The Queen Mother was Bowes, not Bowles,” yeah. No again, as far as we know, look there’ve always been rumours, but we will never know.

Oh, this is from Barbara. “The town of Swastika is famous in Canada, as it’s where our Olympic skater Toller Cranston was brought up and learned to skate.” Now it’s interesting because of course Unity, being conceived in Swastika, and Hitler was a bit of a, he was a bit of a fatalist. He believed in the occult, remember. So all these strange coincidences, plus Unity’s middle name given by her grandfather was Valkyrie, so she was Unity Valkyrie Mitford. Remember the grandfather, Lord Redesdale, was crazy about Wagner. So it’s the sort of double entendre, as far as Hitler’s concerned. This beautiful aristocratic English woman who is the daughter of a Lord, who seems to adore him, it was seductive.

Q: “What was in the letter Jessica gave to Wagner?”

A: She was going to kill herself basically. That’s what she was saying. All right Corina, thank you very much, and we have another very important lecture tonight on what’s going on in the Middle East. Carly is interviewing the editor of the “Jerusalem Post”, so I think that’s going to be important.

We’ve got some good lectures this week, and I will see you again next Tuesday. We are slightly changing the format in August. So in the main, you are only going to get 5:00 lectures, because we’re working on the premise that a lot of you are going to want to be out, but we will see. Anyway, look after yourselves. Thank you Karina.

• Thanks.

• And I’ll see you next Tuesday.